Perpetual population growth is neither possible nor desirable

These latest figures, showing yet another year of population growth, raise a fundamental question millions of voters would like to ask, but is never answered: what is the government's population policy?

Rosamund McDougall, Co-Chair and Policy Director, The Optimum Population Trust

3:12PM BST 21 Aug 2008

Is it to continue to pack this crowded island until our numbers reach 109 million in 2081? That's the highest current population projection, assuming an average family size of just over two children, net immigration running at 250,000 a year, and longer life expectancy.

Even the more realistic 'principal' projection from the Office for National Statistics takes us to 85 million by 2081, adding another 16 million people by 2050. Accommodating another 16 million people would mean the equivalent of building another four Londons, in a country already suffering pressures on infrastructure, environmental stress and looming energy shortages.

Successive governments' policies, which have never been explicitly stated, appear still to be based on an arithmetically impossible presumption that perpetual population growth is desirable, that more people means faster economic growth, and that 'breeding for Britain' or mass inward migration will relieve the expected burden of providing for an ageing population.

It is true that our population is ageing, and that the costs of supporting an increasing number of people over 80 will be a strain on pension and health service resources. But perpetual population growth is no solution: it can only increase the ratio of people of working age to pensioners in the short term. In the long term, today's young people will become pensioners in turn, requiring yet more younger people to support them.

There are other solutions to any developed nation's need to support its ever-ageing citizens, and the first is to make better use of the population it already has. Paradoxically, the government is beginning to tackle this, though without any stated aim of stopping population growth. Pension age has been raised and healthy pensioners are among the fastest growing re-entrants to the workforce.

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1m of the 2.62m people on incapacity benefit are reported to want to work, too. Even in an expanding economy, there is usually enough spare capacity in the domestic labour market to ensure that more jobs can be filled locally.

Several challenges remain. Employers complain that unemployed people in Britain do not have the skills needed to fill their vacancies and balk at picking up the bill for education and training. Neither are taxpayers willing to fund twice the basic skills they believe should have been acquired before younger generations leave school.

Many unemployed people need recognition that they can only work part-time or flexibly if they are to work at all.

But all this can be done, with political will. If population can be stabilised at a level which is environmentally sustainable in the long term, the future could be a brighter one, with a better quality of life for all.